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This month’s Drollerie Press Blog Tour theme is Foolery: April Fool’s Day, playing jokes, pranks or mishaps or mischief that occur in your writing, and anything else our participants could think to come up with.

My contribution for the tour is a new character snippet upholding the theme: what happens when Jude Lawrence meets her new officemate Kendis Thompson, and discovers that she’s coming onto a team with a lively sense of humor. (This is what Jude gets for having a birthday on April 1st!)

Hope y’all enjoy! I figured it was about time Jude should have a character vignette!

This month’s Drollerie Press Blog Tour theme is Foolery: April Fool’s Day, playing jokes, pranks or mishaps or mischief that occur in your writing, and anything else our participants could think to come up with.

My contribution for the tour is a new character snippet upholding the theme: what happens when Jude Lawrence meets her new officemate Kendis Thompson, and discovers that she’s coming onto a team with a lively sense of humor. (This is what Jude gets for having a birthday on April 1st!)

Hope y’all enjoy! I figured it was about time Jude should have a character vignette!

Hi there all and welcome to another edition of the Drollerie Press Blog Tour! If you’ve had half an eye on the Internet at all today you’ve probably seen a lot of clever things going around (in no small part what the fine folks at xkcd did to their site, as well as the many amusing posts tor.com had up), and in a similar spirit, we’d like to bring you a few posts on the theme of Foolery as well.

Please come around to all our posts and say hi, you guys! Bonus points if you bring with you a bit of Foolery of your own–and be on the lookout for what we’ll get posted next time. As always, thanks for coming by!

Hi there all and welcome to another edition of the Drollerie Press Blog Tour! If you’ve had half an eye on the Internet at all today you’ve probably seen a lot of clever things going around (in no small part what the fine folks at xkcd did to their site, as well as the many amusing posts tor.com had up), and in a similar spirit, we’d like to bring you a few posts on the theme of Foolery as well.

Please come around to all our posts and say hi, you guys! Bonus points if you bring with you a bit of Foolery of your own–and be on the lookout for what we’ll get posted next time. As always, thanks for coming by!

We’ve had a bit of a hiatus on this, y’all, but as of this month I’m reinstating the Drollerie Blog Tour! This time around, though, we’re doing something different: we’re inviting non-Drollerie authors to come participate, and so for the February round, several of my fellow Drollerie authors and I will be swapping posts with several non-Drollerie authors. I hope to make this a regular thing–so any non-Drollerie authors reading this, if you’d like in on the blog action, do drop me a comment and let me know.

But! This month’s topic, aside from general introductions of various authors, is “best and worst experiences with works in progress”. And this month’s lineup of posts is as follows:

Anna Kashina is hosting a post by author Gayleen Froese, here. Gayleen in return is hosting a post by Anna here.

John Rosenman and I are both hosting Hamish MacDonald, a true self-published author. My link for him is here, and John has his version of the post over here. In exchange, Hamish has posts up for both me and John!

Our own David Sklar is exchanging posts with Angelia Sparrow. David’s post on Angelia’s blog is here, and David has Angelia’s post up on his LJ over here.

As always, thanks for reading these posts, y’all, and I highly encourage you to visit all the posts on the tour. Drop comments and say hi, and tell the authors I sent you! We’ll be back again in another month or so, and we hope to expand the scope of where Drollerie authors visit. Watch this space for more details!

We’ve had a bit of a hiatus on this, y’all, but as of this month I’m reinstating the Drollerie Blog Tour! This time around, though, we’re doing something different: we’re inviting non-Drollerie authors to come participate, and so for the February round, several of my fellow Drollerie authors and I will be swapping posts with several non-Drollerie authors. I hope to make this a regular thing–so any non-Drollerie authors reading this, if you’d like in on the blog action, do drop me a comment and let me know.

But! This month’s topic, aside from general introductions of various authors, is “best and worst experiences with works in progress”. And this month’s lineup of posts is as follows:

Anna Kashina is hosting a post by author Gayleen Froese, here. Gayleen in return is hosting a post by Anna here.

John Rosenman and I are both hosting Hamish MacDonald, a true self-published author. My link for him is here, and John has his version of the post over here. In exchange, Hamish has posts up for both me and John!

Our own David Sklar is exchanging posts with Angelia Sparrow. David’s post on Angelia’s blog is here, and David has Angelia’s post up on his LJ over here.

As always, thanks for reading these posts, y’all, and I highly encourage you to visit all the posts on the tour. Drop comments and say hi, and tell the authors I sent you! We’ll be back again in another month or so, and we hope to expand the scope of where Drollerie authors visit. Watch this space for more details!

This month for the blog tour, I’m hosting Hamish MacDonald, a fellow member of the Outer Alliance. Many people turn up their noses at the concept of self-publishing, but Hamish avoids all of the usual issues with that–he not only writes his own books, he designs, prints, hand-binds, and sells them, too. He is, in short, a true self-published author.

If you’d like to read the rest of the blog tour posts for this round, point your browsers right here.

And without further ado, here’s Hamish! I’ve put in a More link where he mentions a spoiler warning for the ending of his book, but you can get most of his post without it. Enjoy, all!

The Boomerang of Revelation

My best experience with a work in progress isn’t a particular event, but a kind of experience. It happens at some point with every book, but I first became aware of it when writing my second novel, The Willies.

I’m a huge fan of outlining. Before I start a novel, I plot out the whole arc of the story. It’s like taking a map on vacation: You can still wander all you like, but you won’t get lost or fall off a cliff. Some people start at Page One and that works for them — most notably Stephen King, as he claimed in his book, On Writing — but I find I can let go more when I can trust that I know where I’m going. Having a map of Paris is completely different to walking through its streets, so I don’t think it spoils the fun at all; in fact, it makes sure you don’t miss the best sights.

Isn’t outlining everything in advance like opening your Christmas presents early? No, because unlike a Christmas present, the stakes with a story are different: There might be a dead chicken in the box, and it’s best to know that before you’ve committed a year or two to the project.

That said, there’s always a point with every book when I discover some piece of the map is blank: I thought I’d filled that in, but something here doesn’t connect. With The Willies, that happened at the end, and the whole story fell into a pothole in the road. How does it end?

The Willies is a science fiction/thriller/comedy story about two friends who discover they’re clones. The lead character, Hugh, has a perfect memory: everything he’s ever seen and heard is stored up in his head. He and his childhood best friend, Simon, were products of an experiment and were never meant to be born, and now someone wants them dead. So by the end, they’ve been on the run for about 250 pages, wrestling as they go with the difficult friendship they’ve had. But how would it resolve?

(Spoiler warning: I’m going to talk about the ending here, in case you might consider reading the book.)

This month for the blog tour, I’m hosting Hamish MacDonald, a fellow member of the Outer Alliance. Many people turn up their noses at the concept of self-publishing, but Hamish avoids all of the usual issues with that–he not only writes his own books, he designs, prints, hand-binds, and sells them, too. He is, in short, a true self-published author.

If you’d like to read the rest of the blog tour posts for this round, point your browsers right here.

And without further ado, here’s Hamish! I’ve put in a More link where he mentions a spoiler warning for the ending of his book, but you can get most of his post without it. Enjoy, all!

The Boomerang of Revelation

My best experience with a work in progress isn’t a particular event, but a kind of experience. It happens at some point with every book, but I first became aware of it when writing my second novel, The Willies.

I’m a huge fan of outlining. Before I start a novel, I plot out the whole arc of the story. It’s like taking a map on vacation: You can still wander all you like, but you won’t get lost or fall off a cliff. Some people start at Page One and that works for them — most notably Stephen King, as he claimed in his book, On Writing — but I find I can let go more when I can trust that I know where I’m going. Having a map of Paris is completely different to walking through its streets, so I don’t think it spoils the fun at all; in fact, it makes sure you don’t miss the best sights.

Isn’t outlining everything in advance like opening your Christmas presents early? No, because unlike a Christmas present, the stakes with a story are different: There might be a dead chicken in the box, and it’s best to know that before you’ve committed a year or two to the project.

That said, there’s always a point with every book when I discover some piece of the map is blank: I thought I’d filled that in, but something here doesn’t connect. With The Willies, that happened at the end, and the whole story fell into a pothole in the road. How does it end?

The Willies is a science fiction/thriller/comedy story about two friends who discover they’re clones. The lead character, Hugh, has a perfect memory: everything he’s ever seen and heard is stored up in his head. He and his childhood best friend, Simon, were products of an experiment and were never meant to be born, and now someone wants them dead. So by the end, they’ve been on the run for about 250 pages, wrestling as they go with the difficult friendship they’ve had. But how would it resolve?

(Spoiler warning: I’m going to talk about the ending here, in case you might consider reading the book.)

Those of you out there who’ve been with me a while will know I’ve been hosting the semi-regular Drollerie Press blog tours. My fellow Drollerie authors and I have had some fun doing these, but in 2010, we’re seeking to expand the scope of our efforts. We’d love to find some non-Drollerie authors with whom we could do blog post exchanges. So far our little tours have been monthly (although we’ve canceled a couple of times for various reasons), but the interval in question would be negotiable depending on how many authors wanted to get involved and what their commitments would be like.

We are of course writing in a mix of genres at Drollerie: urban fantasy, romance, SF, horror, etc., and we’re predominantly in electronic form, although a few of us have our work available in print as well. Ideally I’d like to find other authors who are e-pubbed and/or who share our genres, but print-based authors are of course very welcome as well.

Drollerie of course lives here, and if you’d like to check out an example of one of our recent blog tours, check out the December master post I put up on Drollerie’s main blog. If you’re a writer reading this and you might be interested in setting up an exchange of posts, let me know! Drop me a comment, message me on LJ or DW, fling me email, whatever works. I look forward to hearing from you!

Those of you out there who’ve been with me a while will know I’ve been hosting the semi-regular Drollerie Press blog tours. My fellow Drollerie authors and I have had some fun doing these, but in 2010, we’re seeking to expand the scope of our efforts. We’d love to find some non-Drollerie authors with whom we could do blog post exchanges. So far our little tours have been monthly (although we’ve canceled a couple of times for various reasons), but the interval in question would be negotiable depending on how many authors wanted to get involved and what their commitments would be like.

We are of course writing in a mix of genres at Drollerie: urban fantasy, romance, SF, horror, etc., and we’re predominantly in electronic form, although a few of us have our work available in print as well. Ideally I’d like to find other authors who are e-pubbed and/or who share our genres, but print-based authors are of course very welcome as well.

Drollerie of course lives here, and if you’d like to check out an example of one of our recent blog tours, check out the December master post I put up on Drollerie’s main blog. If you’re a writer reading this and you might be interested in setting up an exchange of posts, let me know! Drop me a comment, message me on LJ or DW, fling me email, whatever works. I look forward to hearing from you!

One of my fellow Drollerie authors, Meredith Holmes, unfortunately was in the hospital this week with a pulmonary embolism. So she was unable to participate in the Blog Tour this time around, and since she was scheduled to host Elisa Diehl, I’m going to take care of hosting Elisa’s post instead. Check it out, folks!

And also, stop by Meredith’s place and wish her well. ‘Cause hospitals are never fun, especially this close to Christmas.

One of my fellow Drollerie authors, Meredith Holmes, unfortunately was in the hospital this week with a pulmonary embolism. So she was unable to participate in the Blog Tour this time around, and since she was scheduled to host Elisa Diehl, I’m going to take care of hosting Elisa’s post instead. Check it out, folks!

And also, stop by Meredith’s place and wish her well. ‘Cause hospitals are never fun, especially this close to Christmas.

Those of you who know about my completed but unpublished novels will know I’ve got Queen of Souls, a Persephone and Hades story on the queue to be edited into queryable shape. So it should surprise none of you that I’m quite interested in checking out Frayed Tapestry, by my fellow Drollerie author Imogen Howson. In fact, as the cool kids like to say, her post for this month’s Drollerie Blog Tour, on the topic of dangerous writing, is Relevant to My Interests indeed.

Those of you who know about my completed but unpublished novels will know I’ve got Queen of Souls, a Persephone and Hades story on the queue to be edited into queryable shape. So it should surprise none of you that I’m quite interested in checking out Frayed Tapestry, by my fellow Drollerie author Imogen Howson. In fact, as the cool kids like to say, her post for this month’s Drollerie Blog Tour, on the topic of dangerous writing, is Relevant to My Interests indeed.

We had a bit of server trouble on drolleriepress.com this evening, so this is a mirror copy of this month’s blog tour post! Enjoy, all!

Hey all, and welcome to the October 2009 edition of the Drollerie Blog Tour! This month’s theme is the lesser-known holiday of Sweetest Day, and we’re taking the opportunity to touch upon the general theme of what the day stands for: those who are encouraging to us. Some of us will be addressing this in terms of our writing, and others? It’ll be our characters.

Hey there all, it’s Drollerie Blog Tour day again, and this time around we’ve chosen as our theme an October holiday. No no, not the one you’re thinking of; we’re writing about Sweetest Day, and by extension, people who have been helpful, kind, or encouraging to us about our writing, or as the case may be, to our various characters.

I’m hosting the inimitable dr_pretentious this time around, and without further ado, I shall turn the floor over to her!

The living room looked as if a Babies-R-Us had exploded in it. On the dining table, three baskets of clean laundry waited for someone to fold them. The kitchen floor was still smeared with finger paint, how many days after the painting incident? We weren’t really sure anymore. And our son wanted to experiment with the potty, which meant somebody would have to spend the next hour reading him those same damn potty training picture books. Between my students’ return from vacation, Dan’s work deadlines, and Gareth’s obsession with wearing big-boy underpants, we had completely lost our grip on the chores.

It was the fourth night in a row that I’d planned to get out of the house and write, only to conclude I had no right to the time. Yet again, I rolled up my sleeves and headed for the sink. The pile of dishes threatened to topple down onto the counter at any moment.

“Go write,” said Dan. “I’ve got it under control.”

I couldn’t help laughing. “Under control?”

“All right, nothing is under control. Go write anyway.” He picked up the picture books I could not stand to look at one more time that day. “Gareth, give Mommy a good-night hug. She needs to go to work now. Sarah, I don’t want to see you back here until they close up at Barnes & Noble.”

Nothing was under control, of course. Three hours later, I came home to a house Dan had been working on ceaselessly since the moment he tucked our son into his crib, and the place still looked like it merited a visit from a reality television crew from the Home and Garden network. It’s amazing how effort disappears into the vortex of parenthood.

I’d written my five hundred words, like a person or something, like a writer, like the self I remembered being. It was the sweetest day.

Many thanks to Sarah for sharing this lovely moment with us! And if you’d like to continue checking out the blog tour posts, go visit Heather Parker and check out Nora Fleischer’s post there!

Hey there all, you may have seen my earlier posts today for the Drollerie Blog Tour, from Rachel Olivier and Elisa Diehl–and if you didn’t, you should go read them! We’re talking about music this time around and they’ve got good thoughts to share.

And if you’d like to sample the entire Drollerie Blog Tour for the month, you can do so right over here on the main Drollerie site.

If that’s not enough Drollerie goodness for you, you can come by on Sunday the 27th at 4pm Eastern time, 1pm Pacific for our next Drollerie Press chat, too! It’s very laid back and casual and we’d love to see some new faces show up, so consider popping by to say hi and tell us what you think of music in writing, of your favorite zombie books, of the superpowers of David Bowie, or any other topic your little heart desires.

And here, y’all, is my second guest for the September Drollerie Blog Tour. On the theme of “music”, E. G. Diehl has come by to share with you her musical background–which, I’ve got to say, is impressive!–and how music will be showing up in her forthcoming Drollerie Press works.

Elisa lives over here and is doing a post exchange with me this month for the tour! Peek behind the fold for her post, and when you’re done with that, go say hi to her at her place, and check out what I’ve got to say about Faerie Blood’s playlist!

Greetings all and welcome to the September Drollerie Blog Tour. Our theme is “music”, and Rachel Olivier is the first of the two guests I’ll be hosting for this round. Rachel is a writer, copyeditor, and proofreader with Putt Putt Productions, and keeps a blog over here.

Peek behind the fold to see what Rachel’s got to share about how music has influenced her life and her writing!

For those of you who might be paying attention, I took a little time to update most of the pages on the site tonight, to properly reflect recent developments in Faerie Blood’s purchasability (i.e., holy crap you can actually buy my book on Amazon now!). I also updated my Contact page to point off to my personal non-writing blog, annathepiper.org, and to mention the various LJ-like sites that this blog and annathepiper.org both mirror to.

And, I added in the missing June and July Drollerie Blog Tour links on the Extras page. Speaking of which, there will be no Drollerie Blog Tour this month since I do have a deadline I’m trying to hit. However, my fellow Drollerie author Rachael de Vienne, who wrote Pixie Warrior, is hosting a couple of guest posts that you might enjoy, so go check her out. She also posts lots of lovely old vintage photos as well, which are fun.

The Blog Tour will resume as normal in September, and with a topic that is of course near and dear to my heart: music. All y’all who’ve read Faerie Blood, if you have any requests for music-themed character vignettes or specific characters you’d like to see show up in same, drop a comment and let me know!